Poverty and Small-scale Fisheries in West Africa

This book arises from case studies and two back-to-back workshops held in Cotonou, Benin in November 2001. They were the combination of much experience and knowledge gathered in the West Africa region and were brought about to explore the concept of poverty, especially how it is a part of the life of fishing communities and our ways of thinking about resolving the issue. The workshops were conceived as a partnership between the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (F AO) and 25 countries of West Africa, working together through the Sustainable Fisheries Livelihood Programme (SFLP) to join forces with the Centre for the Economics and Management of Aquatic Resources (CEMARE). The SFLP, with its remit of poverty alleviation in West African artisanal fisheries communities through better governance and improved policies to involve communities in management of the resources on which their livelihoods depend, had quickly realised that it needed to define what and whom it was targeting. In this respect, the two large back-to-back workshops marked a milestone for the SFLP. Those participating in the workshop soon emphasised that we need to push forward our ideas from the previous simplistic "less than a dollar a day" type definitions to show that poverty is multi-faceted and a dynamic feature of human society.

1. Introduction.- 2. The nature and causes of poverty: an overview.- 3. The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach: the importance of policies, institutions and process.- 4. Some poverty approaches and their applications to Senegal.- 5. Poverty in small-scale fisheries: A review and some further thoughts.- 6. The challenge of managing small-scale fisheries with reference to poverty alleviation.- 7. Poverty profiles of artisanal fishers: methods based on the SLA model.- 8. The sustainable livelihoods approach and the improvement of the living conditions of fishing communities: relevance, applicability and applications.- 9. Fisheries co-management and poverty alleviation in the context of the Sustainable Livelihood Approach; a case study in the fishing communities of Aby Lagoon in Côte d'Ivoire.- 10. Socio-economic impacts of different fisheries management strategies at the local level.- 11. Fisheries development, poverty alleviation and small-scale fisheries: a review of policy and performance in developing countries since 1950.- 12. Fisheries management, poverty alleviation and the implementation of the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries.- 13. The work of the Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme (SFLP) in West Africa.- 14. Poverty in coastal fishing communities.